Develop Yourself
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Develop Yourself
#231 - Roasting A Listener's Resume, LinkedIn and GitHub Profile
Send a text and I may answer it on next episode (I cannot reply from this service 😢)
A listener, Andrew, was kind enough to send me his resume, LinkedIn and GitHub profile for me to roast.
Overall - he did a good job BUT there are some issues I would fix that I've seen in many of the hundreds of resumes I've seen over the years as an engineering manager or while helping to hire other developers at companies where I worked.
You can watch here: https://youtu.be/k0_6grxbhXc
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💼 Zubin's LinkedIn (ex-lawyer, former Google, Brian-look-a-like)
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Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network and more. I'm Brian, your host. Over the years, I've seen a lot of resumes, right? I was an engineering manager a couple years ago and I easily went through something like 200 resumes just in that one year alone, looking for people. Now, I'm not a recruiter. I'm also not a resume writing expert, but I will tell you that, after seeing hundreds of resumes over the years from mostly junior developers as an engineering manager or working in multiple companies, I've seen a few things that probably are hurting you when it comes to the game of getting employed right, and so take my advice with a grain of salt. I recently made a post on LinkedIn where I asked people to send me their resumes so I could roast them, and I got a lot of really good entries. In fact, I had a lot of really good resumes out there, but I wanted to look at one which is pretty indicative, representative what I see is wrong with a lot of people's resumes. So I'm going to go through a guy's resume and his LinkedIn and his GitHub profile to show you some areas where I think you can probably improve and make your chances of succeeding better. So let's take a look at this resume from Andrew. Sitting in his resume, I've taken out some of the information which may be sensitive information and things like that. Obviously, we don't want to share too much, but he also sent this in, so this is fine. I mean, it's GitHub. These are all publicly available links. There's nothing on here that should compromise anything for Andrew. Andrew, by the way, thank you for doing this and being brave and doing this.
Speaker 1:Let's go through this resume in real time. So all this stuff at the top, okay, normal stuff. Objective software developer in a healthy work environment. To be honest, when I read this and you think who's your audience for this kind of thing? It's probably not another software developer, it's probably a recruiter. Who's going to be reading this? Somebody in HR, somebody with zero type of software development experience. Right, and this objective is OK. I mean there's nothing. I mean I think we all want a healthy work environment. We don't want to go to an unhealthy work environment, but I think this is a chance to come on really strong.
Speaker 1:Like tell me why this is a sales pitch. Your resume is basically a sales script that you're giving out to the world. You are the product you're trying to sell yourself. This is not exactly selling. It's basically telling me or the person, what you want. But remember, you're the one trying to sell your service on the open market. So, with that in mind, this should probably be something a lot stronger, like here's what I do and here's why you want to hire me. For example, I'm a software developer specializing in mobile apps. I've built X, y and Z different apps across different platforms for multiple companies, or I've started my own startup, or I recently learned all these things and here's how I'm doing this. To help prove your business bottom line Something. Right, tell me, hey, you want to hire for sure, right, like you need me.
Speaker 1:On your frequency, we go down to freelancing projects. Why say freelancing? Why not just say work history? I do like the fact this person has some actual work history and they've bolded things. So if I'm looking through this like soft over 40 critical bugs this is kind of generic though it's it's all those things. What does what does that mean? What were these critical products? Right, it makes me ask questions.
Speaker 1:Also, one thing I noticed here immediately this tells me what the person did and it even tells me some of the quantitative data, like what things were improved, like increased revenue by 32%. That's actually really, really impressive. But if you're a recruiter hiring manager person that's looking at this and you're hiring for a full stack JavaScript developer for reading this, could you do that? Would you feel confident hiring this person saying I want to hire you as a full stack JavaScript developer? It's not clear to me what the technology this person used in here at all and if you're a recruiter, this would be very difficult for you to move forward. You say I don't know. I just don't know. What does this person do? What kind of languages did he use? Again here, very impressive stat, but nothing about the technologies used Interesting. I've noticed this a lot.
Speaker 1:So this person does two out of three things that I think are really important. They say what they did and what was the benefit. They're missing a very important piece what was the? That is a perfect recipe for writing really, really good little lines under each of your pieces of work experience. I also appreciate this person didn't put like some random work history or anything like that.
Speaker 1:And I look at this. They should have put this at the top Software engineering and full time experience. Why wouldn't you put that at the very top instead of freelance Freelance? Nowadays, honestly, I think it raises people's red flags and they freelance. What does that mean? You just build something on your own. You know people have a side eye to it. Trust is at an all time low. So if you have any full-time experience, put it on there. If you did some internship experience, that also counts as work experience. Do you have to tell people it was an internship? I don't know. Do you need to tell people it was a freelance project? I don't know either.
Speaker 1:I think we are too quick to offer more information than people need to make a decision. We want to give them the minimum amount of information required to make that decision. Technologies we use why we're a really good fit. Sell yourself, but don't give them reasons to back out. Remember, this is a sales pitch. You're essentially writing. So now we get down to extracurricular activities and competitions and things like that.
Speaker 1:I think this actually is really impressive. So if you're a software developer, you see Advent of Code. You're like oh, I know Advent of Code. This alone would be a reason for me to maybe say I think we should move forward with this person, because I love Advent of Code, but this person would honestly be like a maybe, and that's the problem. Most resumes aren't so terrible that they get immediately thrown in the no pile, but most of them end up in this maybe pile, like maybe, like they're not terrible, but they're not like a solid yes. And so when I look at here and this is another interesting way of phrasing these things it says excellent in certain languages, very good in some other languages, good in some other languages, then basic in the final one.
Speaker 1:I don't think I'd put that in there. What if the recruiter was hiring for somebody that well, they need to be really good at Nodejs? Why wouldn't you just put down what the frameworks and languages you know and then they can decide whether you're excellent, very good or basic during the interview. Right, you could have blocked an interview just from this piece alone. This used to be a really common way that people would do their portfolios. They'd have like this bar, and the bar would stretch from like zero to 100% and it would have the technology that they listed on there, like I am 80% good at JavaScript, I'm 50% good at C sharp, and then it's so arbitrary that it's hard to like gauge anything from that and it really just ends up hurting you. So, in my opinion, don't tell people what your proficiency is in something. Just put down that you actually know the thing. Let the proficiency be determined during the interview. Hey, I really hope you're enjoying this episode Now.
Speaker 1:As you may know, I've joined forces with an ex-Google engineer, zubin Pratap, who's also an ex-lawyer and learned to code at the age of 37. He and I have very similar stories and we've combined forces to create a highly customized and personalized coaching mentorship program for career changers who are serious about breaking into tech. If you know that the outdated coding bootcamp model won't work for you, you're serious and realize that this transformation will take time. We want to speak with you. Our program is not easy, it's not short, but it's highly effective. If you're a listener of this show, you're likely the kind of person we want to work with. If you're ready to apply, click the link in the show notes and you'll be talking to Zubin or I on the phone about the program. Now back to the episode.
Speaker 1:Now let's get to this guy's LinkedIn, my favorite thing, because LinkedIn is basically your resume to the world, because before people even look at your resume or maybe they're not even looking at it they're probably going to your LinkedIn Open to work banner. I personally don't like using this. Why don't I like using this and why don't? A lot of career coaches and people that are online and talk about career stuff not outside of tech everywhere they often say don't use this. Why? If I'm just being brutally honest, it makes people look a little desperate. It puts them in a category of people that are all open to work. It's just probably not going to work in your favor. I don't know. Everybody seems to have a different opinion on this. This is mine, but it's also an opinion shared by the majority of career coaches out there. I've read this. I looked this up. Actually, most of them say don't use the open to work banner.
Speaker 1:You can show yourself as open to work to recruiters, but why broadcast it to the whole world? I'm not sure I'd want to do that. In fact, I don't do that. I just I've never done that. I got laid off last year and hired twice since then Another story for another day and I've never used that banner.
Speaker 1:Here's another big, big thing. I see it's missing from a lot of people. They're not at 500 connections. Do you know that most sales organizations won't let you even start working until you get to 500 connections? And you think, why? What's the point? What does this magic 500 number mean? Well, 500 connections is when you're basically connected to everybody in the LinkedIn ecosystem. So if you don't have 500 connections, one of the best ways to do it is follow people that are recommended to you.
Speaker 1:Go under posts that have a lot of comments and likes on them and start following people in the same industry. If you're a software developer, this is pretty easy. There's tons of people talking about software online, me being one of them. You know, danny Thompson. There's tons of people go under their comment section and start liking and start connecting with all the people in the comments or all the people that have liked it. This is a great way to get from zero to 500 within a month or so. You know, this is not like. You don't need to do it super, super quickly. I mean, look at this, I'm just going to connect with this guy right here. I don't know, I've I've never met the guy, I don't know, but hey, why not? You know what's the big deal. This is not social media like Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, where it's kind of weird to connect with people you don't know. It's super normal and most Perhaps the most overused words describe people in software development.
Speaker 1:I see a lot of passionate developers, sultry, sensual developers perhaps I'd like to steer clear of this word, not because it's a bad word, but because it's overused. And so if I want to stand out, if I want to separate myself from the crowd, I want to use different language, different adjectives to describe what I do. I'm going to come on strong. I am a full stack software engineer specializing in mobile apps. I've built several for different clients across multiple spaces, industries and continents. This, oh, that sounds good already, right, and this guy's done that. So this is really cool. Like he's actually done that thing. He could put that on there and it's going to sound so much better than a passionate developer. He's like, yeah, cool, I'm passionate too, right? What does that mean? Software engineer? Hey, you know what's weird. So, on this person's experience here, this says like nothing, it's just like it's a software engineer, and just doesn't tell me what they've done. It says they've done it for a year and eight months, but there's nothing here that lets me know anything about what they've done. It's so strange.
Speaker 1:Why would you not have? They need to be in parity. You need have they need to be in parity. You need to have your resume and you need to have your linkedin aligned. My friend, they should really be aligned. And very impressive stuff here faculty engineering uh, this is good stuff here. They don't have really any endorsements either. So, yeah, this is something that I would definitely be working on. For sure, I'd be working on endorsements, getting the 500 connections and making sure my resume and this are aligned, because right now, it's very unclear and this is way less impressive. Right now, it's very unclear and this is way less impressive than the resume. Resume is impressive. This is not so much. This is the place where I've spent a lot of time getting us in much better shape, all right.
Speaker 1:Lastly, let's go to this person's GitHub First of all. If you have a GitHub and you're sharing it on your resume, maybe don't Right, because I have a GitHub. I've been writing code for 10 years. If somebody goes to my GitHub and this is also weird Look at this they gave themselves a B. Why give yourself a B? Why not just give yourself an A right.
Speaker 1:This is strange to me, that people get rated like this and then would show what if you had a C or a D on here? That would be really not good to show somebody Also here. That would be really not good to show somebody Also. Imagine this recruiters know zero about coding, right, they don't know anything. So they're looking at this and they're saying, b, well, I'm going to get the guy with an A, you know, and they go down here and they look around and then you think, what do I look in here? What do I look into? Admin of code, maybe Slash, not, I don't know. Maybe that one too Railway tailscale VPN I'm looking at that. Why? No rhyme or reason, I don't know. You give people too many choices and they'll look up whatever they want. This looks kind of interesting a little bit, but then again, what does this tell me about the person? What if I'm hiring for a full stack or a mobile app and I see this Railway Tailscale VPN and maybe it's not the best work they have? This is two years old or four months old.
Speaker 1:In general, what I'm saying is, if you want to show off a particular project that's going to help somebody make a decision to hire you, I would opt for a project and not my entire GitHub profile, because the whole GitHub profile is a lot of decisions for somebody to make and they can go to a place you don't want them to go and start poking around and make a decision based on that. This is one of the reasons I don't share my GitHub repo at all. I have plenty of projects that I've handed out. I have stars, I have a lot of contributions. I'm really active, but I don't just give it out without being asked and if somebody does ask, I want to know why they're asking for it and then, on top of that, I'm going to figure out what I can point them to, to show them what I want to show them, because I don't want them looking at some HTML and CSS junk that I created 10 years ago and then judging me based on that. So I hope this was helpful for you. I think this person, andrew, I'm super glad you let me do this and I really appreciate it. Hope I wasn't too harsh at all here, but I think a lot of people are making some version of these mistakes and ideally this can help you out, get a little closer to your goal of getting hired, and if you do have a resume that you'd like me to roast, I'm thinking about doing these, I don't know, maybe once a month, maybe once a week, I don't know.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people with bad stuff out there, or really good resumes too, that I think we can all learn from, myself included. This is a game that is always changing. I'm always changing my resume, I'm trying to see what works, what doesn't work. I talk with recruiters. I've hired people to write my resume. I've used basically every tool you can imagine to try to win the game or get a little bit of an edge, and it's still not clear what works and what doesn't.
Speaker 1:I know things are changing constantly, so, as they change, keeping things updated and making sure that we are moving towards a good standard that helps us get past those first initial barriers to getting that interview and then finally crushing the interview or failing it, at least having a way to get more of them. Anyway, hope that's helped. See you around. That'll do it for today's episode of the Develop Yourself podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and building complex software and want to work directly with me and my team, go to parsityio and if you want more information, feel free to schedule a.
